


Can't See Me

by gracethescribbler



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Cultural Setting, Cara is having none of your shit, First Meetings, Gen, Mandalorians are Wolves, Psychic Wolves, wolf fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:41:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26425042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracethescribbler/pseuds/gracethescribbler
Summary: Mandalorians were hunted so much throughout the galaxy that they developed a shielding mechanism for themselves - no one would ever see who they really were anymore. Din Djarin doesn't want any exceptions, and Cara Dune knows something is up. The Child doesn't care about your sneaky mental projections.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Din Djarin & Cara Dune
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76
Collections: Psychic Wolves for Lupercalia





	Can't See Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ProwlingThunder](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/gifts).



> I really love the concept of psychic wolves, and I'd used for the clones in TCW before. ProwlingThunder and I were talking about what the equivalent would be of "don't take off your helmet" for a Mandalorian who was a psychic wolf, and this is what we came up with. Naturally, at some point I'd like to write "what if he had to take away the disguise," but for now I like this.
> 
> Hope it works for you, Tasha!

Spotchka was fishy-tasting stuff, but not too bad, all things considered. The bright blue liquor was apparently made from krill, and was Sorgan’s chief export, which wasn’t saying much, because Cara wasn’t sure who was buying it. Not that she could judge - with nothing else good to drink, she’d had three cups of it so far and was halfway through a fourth. When she first got to this backwater planet, she could barely stand the stuff, but either it improved overtime or her standards had lowered. Maybe both.

Although the war had ended nine years ago (or less, depending on how you counted - Cara had helped put down half a dozen attempted Imperial resurgences after the Battle of Yavin), she’d never really lost the habit of checking over her shoulder everywhere she went. Turned out some people still had it out for her, so that had saved her life a couple times. So when, as she finished her fourth cup of spotchka, she felt a familiar prickle of warning up her spine, she glanced towards the door with a slight shift in her seat, one hand dropping below the table to where she kept her blaster.

Another patron had just walked in, a large, burly sort of man in full body armor - not a sight that would have been unusual elsewhere in the Outer Rim, but this was Sorgan. Everyone here was either a krill farmer or a brewer, with very little in between. This man was clearly a warrior and, oddly enough, was carrying some kind of pet or baby under one arm - a green-skinned, wrinkly little thing with long ears sticking out from the sides of a squarish head, which kept peering around at everything with big, dark, curious eyes.

There was something off about him. Not just the oddity of the... baby, and how the man stuck out like a sore thumb - Cara’s nerves ticked up a notch, and for some reason she couldn’t name, anxiety churned in her stomach. She felt like she couldn’t look straight at the newcomer, like she was seeing something _wrong,_ and so she looked down at her cup and considered what she ought to do. She trusted her instincts, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so put off by something so, comparably, insignificant.

She thought she saw something out of the corner of her eye, the reflective flash of animal eyes, but when she looked up, no one was looking at her except the little green baby, who had been seated at a table with the armored figure. As Cara looked, he turned towards her, the visor of his helmet indicating he was looking straight at her, and she took a sip of her spotchka and turned away, deliberately cool.

When he was no longer facing her, she slipped her chair back from the table, and pushed herself quietly to her feet. It had been a while since anyone came after her, personally, but she had a bad feeling about this, and she wasn’t going to risk getting hauled back to some bounty guild or Imperial holdover by this man. There may be nothing wrong at all. But it wasn’t worth risking it.

Once outside, she distanced herself from the pub, quietly weaving between thatched buildings.

Her nerves wouldn’t quiet. It felt as though she was being followed, but any time she looked around, or doubled back to look for someone, or took a sudden turn and tried to wait for whoever it was to come into the open, she saw and heard nothing. There was something off about it, surely, but she didn’t know what.

She took a few more steps and then a soft scuff against the ground had her whirling on her heel and dropping into a defensive stance with her fists held near her chin. She was just quick enough to center herself as the burly soldier from the bar lunged at her, his shoulder driving into her chest, his hand gripping her arm for purchase. Cara drove the heel of her hand into his chin, under the helmet, which should have snapped his head back, but something about it felt off - it seemed to do no good except to push him a bit away, and her hand didn’t sting as it connected with the helmet like it should have.

Something felt _off._ Very wrong.

She drove her fist into the pit of his stomach, under his armor cuirass, and staggered back away, trying to reevaluate the fight.

“Back off,” she snapped, opting to try to end the conflict without further blows - while the man’s stance was nothing finessed, and he seemed somewhat reckless, there were still warning bells going off in her mind and she was clearly missing information somewhere.

The soldier tilted his head and stepped back, too, prowling left as if he was trying to circle her. She turned with him, slowly.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “If you’re being paid to hunt me down, I’ll pay you double to leave me alone.” That would wipe out her savings, but she had enough to buy silence and peace, and the wherewithal to build the funds back up again as long as she was careful.

The soldier seemed about to answer her, then his head swiveled to the side and she followed his look - to the weird little green baby he had been carrying around in the pub and had, apparently, not expected to follow him.

The baby took a slow sip from a bowl of soup, as though judging them both, then cooed at the soldier.

Rather to Cara’s surprise, some of the rigidity left the soldier’s stance, and he glanced at her and said in a gruff, modulated voice, “Want a drink?” He then bent down to pick up the baby, and Cara, after a moment’s hesitation, sighed, relaxed, and dusted herself off.

“Sure,” she answered. Stranger things had happened to her.

Still, she couldn’t quite settle her nerves as they turned back toward the pub. There was something wrong about the soldier next to her. Something that she couldn’t place. She would have to keep a careful eye on him.

* * *

Din Djarin would have preferred not to start any fights that day. Carting around a baby everywhere he went made combat situations vastly more dangerous, as Din didn’t want the child to be hurt and couldn’t seem to get it to stay in one place without him, however hard he tried. Therefore, the plan was to lay low.

For a Mandalorian, the plan, to be fair, _always_ involved laying low - the Armorer had once told Din that there was a time when the _Mando’ade_ didn’t have to hide who they were, but then, in the early days of the Empire, that was no longer safe, and they had learned a new way to hide themselves. There was a time, the Armorer said, when white-furred wolf clones of an old _Mand’alor_ had the run of the galaxy and they made themselves the enemies of both the mythical Jedi and the Emperor, and almost all of their people were wiped out. Old statues and murals of wolfish Mandalorian heroes had long-since been destroyed, but there were people who still remembered that there had been a people who looked like wolves but thought and lived and spoke just like other people - or, that was, _almost_ just like other people. Speaking with one’s mind was, the Armorer said, not an uncommon way for sentients to communicate, but had ceased to be safe under the Empire.

So Mandalorians learned a way to shield themselves, and they made people see what they wanted them to see. Most people never noticed the wolf padding along beside them on the street, because to their eyes, it was only a warrior in faceless armor - disconcerting and threatening and, most importantly, protected. Din’s fur was grey, with mottled brown over his shoulders and back, and to match, his projection wore silver-grey, blank armor, because he had no real clan markings yet. The Armorer had always promised him that when he chose a clan and made a name for himself, the markings would come on their own, but Din still had the dull, colorless fur he was born with.

He was fairly sure, however, that the little green foundling saw through his defensive mental projection to the fur underneath - the child would reach up and curl stubby fingers in the mane of grey around his neck, coo at him as Din picked him up by the back of his clothes. But Din had ceased worrying about that - the child needed him and certainly couldn’t share his secret with anyone. No one outside of your clan was supposed to see your true form, but the foundling was a child, and had strange mental strength, in any case. Din had decided that it was no dishonor for a lonely child to see him.

He’d been much more concerned about the muscular woman in the pub today - a Republic shocktrooper, he knew the tattoos. Most ex-soldiers were bounty hunters these days, if they hadn’t retired, and some were with the Guild and some weren’t. The woman stuck out like a sore thumb and clearly marked him as soon as he came in - not unusual, but potentially a bad sign. Din couldn’t afford to be found by the Guild again. So when she’d walked out, he’d followed, and when she tried to evade him, he attacked.

Now, she sipped a cup of spotchka and eyed him suspiciously. “So… You got a name?”

Din shrugged. “Yeah. You?”

The woman rolled her eyes at his non-answer, but crossed her arms and said, “Cara Dune, Alderaan.”

“I’m sorry,” Din said, reflexively. The galaxy was still grappling with the loss of an entire system of planets in one fell swoop - callously, some had called it an ongoing logistics nightmare. Other people were still grieving. Din had never had a home planet, but he could imagine that losing a home and a people all in one day would leave a mark.

Cara snorted, and took a much longer sip of spotchka. “Don’t be. It’s been a while, and I have a lot more to worry about than an old planet.”

There was a lot that Din could have said about that, but he doubted that Cara wanted him to, and in any case, it was none of his business. He shifted where he had curled up on one of the chairs, ears twitching toward the door as another customer came in. Cara, of course, would see none of that - only an awkward human man in a chair too small for him. It was the best safeguard to have: no one knowing who you were.

Only the child, with his big, cheerful eyes, gave Din almost a knowing look as he drank out of a bowl of soup. He’d been very quiet since Cara showed up.

“Guess you aren’t popular,” Din said, making his projection gesture toward her shocktrooper tattoo.

“Not really. I hope you aren’t going to cause me trouble.” The woman’s smile wasn’t quite real, but she was relaxed enough.

Din sighed. “I wasn’t planning on it. If you don’t think this planet is big enough for the both of us…”

“It’s not,” she answered, still smiling, but with a hard edge behind her voice. “If we’re both being hunted, better not to attract twice the danger.”

Din took a closer look at her. She had a stern expression, a square jaw, firm eyes - everything about her was steely and closed off. Appearances, though, were easy, but where he could feel her mind (and influence her perceptions) he felt that she was strong-willed, and didn’t trust what she saw of him. He thought he would’ve liked to get to know her, but the feeling was not, apparently, mutual. Even though she kept shooting confused and curious looks at the child.

Din was just as confused as she was.

He blew out a breath and met her eyes. “I’ll be on my way soon. I just need to get the funds to repair my ship.”

“Alright.” Cara nodded. “Great.”

After that, it became awkward, so shortly Din excused himself, jumped down from his chair, and sent a mental nudge to the foundling to follow him - the child cooed and scrambled down from the chair onto Din’s back, twisting little fingers in his fur. Din padded out of the pub, aware of Cara’s gaze still fixed on him.

Once outside, he turned his head to the little foundling, who appeared content to sit and look at everything around him, and said, “Guess we have to keep moving.”

The child looked at him intelligently and wrinkled his nose.

“That’s what I thought.” Din sighed to himself, flicked his ears in annoyance, and continued off down the road towards his ship. That was the only trouble about projecting an image of yourself that didn’t match - nobody really saw you, and as a result didn’t trust you. But the foundling, for some reason, was different. And if there was only going to be one person that Din could find to travel with him, he was oddly pleased that it was the strange little child. He didn’t need anyone else.


End file.
